Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Staircase Blockade Effort

As most of you know from my recent posts William is now crawling around like a maniac. I think this crawling phenomenon jump started a few other milestones because soon after he was pulling himself up to standing on every piece of structure in our house. It has provided for a lot of bumped bums and smashed faces. But as Brian's mom puts it, these are good cries. Referring, of course, to the bad cries when he was so sick with his ear infection.

When we are upstairs William is fascinated with making a mad dash toward the staircase. I haven't found it in me to go out and purchase a gate yet. Yes, I'm one of those people. The kind that will try every other tactic before having to lay down hard-earned money.

At first I thought I would just try to see what he would do once he got to the staircase. Would he really try to go down them or does he just want to peer over the edge? It turns out William seems to believe stairs are flat. While I sat a few stairs down he came arm over arm, knee over knee as fast as he could. And then he just kept going. Right over that first stair and came down into my arms.

My next idea came when I brought my handheld vacuum into the upstairs bathroom to pick up all my hair that sheds on the floor. When I turned it on William started shaking and then wailing. He's terrified of this vacuum. (But curiously, he's not scared of the much larger version that we use on our carpets.) That's when the light bulb went on. I placed this vacuum in front of the stairs like a guard protecting a castle and then waited to see what would happen. The scene is so hilarious that I'm going to try to get it on video so that I can post it here. Right on cue William makes his way cruising like a wild man to the stairs but as soon as he saw that vacuum he stopped in his tracks, sat up, spit out the pouting lip and started crying. And while this idea provides some good footage, I don't think I can rely on it while I'm in the other room out of sight.

The next idea was Brian's and it seemed foolproof but oh how those babies will prove you wrong. Every night after his dinner Brian gives William his bath. This is my time to clean up the kitchen, eat dinner or watch the evening news. Since William has started crawling it has been a struggle for Brian to get the water running, find the bath towel, jammies and lotion and get that all laid out all while trying to chase William away from the stairs. So last night Brian decided to shut the door on William in his baby-proofed room with all his toys. Seemed like a great idea to me because he's not tall enough to reach for the door knob yet.

Answer me this: What do crawlers do when you leave a room? Say it with me. They follow you! So William did just that. And when the bath was ready Brian couldn't open the bedroom door because William was sitting up against it. When I came upstairs to see all the commotion it was truly a hilarious sight to be seen. The more Brian tried to tell William to back away from the door, the closer William came to the door to see what daddy was doing.

So there is no grand idea so far but I also haven't given up. I'll let you know if there's a gate in our future.